Ten Summoner's Tales
by auroraziazan
Summary: A series of loosely connected events that affected the Order. Character studies, so far on Colin Creevey, Percy Weasley, LilyJames, and the trio.
1. If I Ever Lose My Faith In You

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters here. I don't own the music either, but I do feel rather protecting of the specific combination, so at least ask me if you want to use it.

If I Ever Lose My Faith In You

I could be lost inside their lies without a trace

But every time I close my eyes I see your face

I never saw no miracle of science

That didn't go from a blessing to a curse

I never saw no military solution

That didn't always end up as something worse but

Let me say this first

If I ever lose my faith in you

There'd be nothing left for me to do

- Sting

Colin Creevey sighed, opening the _Daily Prophet_ across his lap. He hadn't been able to do more than glance at the front headlines that morning at breakfast. Hermione and several of the Weasleys had seen it and started sending him death glares, which made him feel awkward enough to guiltily fold it up and tuck it in his school bag. But here, with the curtains drawn around his four-poster, he would be unnoticed.

He had known all summer that there was something missing from the paper. Harry had talked about Voldemort at the end of last term, and didn't that mean anything to them? Voldemort coming back? He hadn't been there the first time around of course, but he had heard enough in the mutters of the older students to know that it had been really dreadful. And all the things they were saying about Harry and Professor Dumbledore, he didn't half understand the politics of what Dumbledore was doing, but there had to be something going on about it all.

And now that evil-looking Umbridge woman was there teaching a Defense Against the Dark Arts class that didn't seem to do anything, and there seemed to be Slytherins plotting in every corner, and all these new educational decrees, the Ministry sticking their hand in where he didn't think it was supposed to be. There was definitely something awry.

And what to do, he thought again, about that meeting Ginny had mentioned for the next Hogsmeade weekend? He planned to go, of course, but ought he, really? Was it really safe for a Muggle born to be so definitively playing his hand? Since he had stopped shoving his camera up everyone's noses, they hardly noticed if he were there or not. Surely Voldemort's followers, if they really were revived, wouldn't pay any attention to him, and he'd be fine without the extra defensive training.

But one glance to the photo frames on his window brought him back to reality. A still of his family, before he left, and his first mover, of Harry. Harry Potter, the savior of the world. Harry Potter, who had killed the basilisk, who had saved him and Ginny. Harry Potter, who knew about all there was to know about defending one's self, and wasn't that how he had convinced his parents to let him come there in the first place? There were all those werewolves and vampires and hags and things in the world that people needed protection from? Even more, as he had seen since he got here, all those prejudices and wrongdoings that needed to be stopped? He wouldn't be where he was if it hadn't been for Harry, he remembered. So whatever cliff I may be jumping off, I'm just going to have to trust him.

A/N: I will try to do regular-ish updates for this one. I have a clear muse and should have enough time to write a bit the next few days. I think all of the stories are within OotP, but we may go a touch off canon. Write if there is anything you want me to clean up a bit, or anything you particularly like about these. I doubt they'll all be as soliloquied as this, but we'll have to see.


	2. Love Is Stronger Than Justice

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters here. I don't own the music either, but I do feel rather protecting of the specific combination, so at least ask me if you want to use it.

Love Is Stronger Than Justice (The Munificent Seven)

Love is stronger than justice

Love is thicker than blood

Love is stronger than justice

Love is a big, fat river in flood

- Sting

He shouldn't have done it. He knew he shouldn't have done it. But Penny had never been close to the other Weasleys, as an only child they always seemed overwhelming and just so loud. And, frankly, he agreed. Besides, as a pureblood family, who did they think they were siding with? Frankly, associating themselves with Dumbledore's little band just wasn't safe. Didn't they know what had happened to the group the first time around? Very few of the people known to have been close to Dumbledore in the first war were still alive to tell the tale.

Still, they were his family. At least Molly had always been so good to him, even if she did seem to favor the older boys, with their Quidditch practices. But she'd never approve of what he had chosen, especially not his moving in with Penny. She'd never understand. And Arthur might understand the girl, but the politics of it, not likely. It was useless to even discuss the decision with the other boys, as they'd never listened to anything else he'd said. He wasn't sure about Ginny, but she was unlikely to side with him against all the rest.

It was a shame, though. They mostly had good intentions, for all that they were misguided.

A/N: I know, I know, they're still way short. They will get longer, I promise. I just developed this idea around some of the later stories, and so those ideas have been stewing for longer. Tell me what you think, what I missed, if you just hate the whole thing (well, maybe I don't want to know, but it's the thought that counts).


	3. Fields of Gold

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters here. I don't own the music either, but I do feel rather protecting of the specific combination, so at least ask me if you want to use it.

Fields of Gold

So she took her love

For to gaze awhile

Upon the fields of barley

In his arms she fell as her hair came down

Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me, will you be my love

Among the fields of barley

We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we lie in fields of gold

I never made promises lightly

And there have been some that I've broken

But I swear in the days still left

We'll walk in fields of gold.

We'll walk in fields of gold.

- Sting

"James, get me out of here," Lily scrawled quickly down the side of her History of Magic notes.

"Lily Evans, Head Girl extraordinaire, wants to skip a class two weeks before N.E.W.T.S.? Are you ill?" he wrote back, ignoring the scratching of his quill.

"James Potter, you will get me out of here or I will tell Sirius exactly who told Ella Graham about his flowered pants."

"Okay, okay, calm down Lils. How do you expect me to get you out of here?"

"How should I know? You're the one who is supposed to be a master at this!"

"I'll come up with something. Where do you want to go?"

She didn't respond just sat there staring at the parchment, and at him.

"Okay, does it need to happen now?"

She gestured desperately towards Professor Binns, who was going at double his usual speed without any more energy than usual.

"Follow my lead." He tucked the pen in the side of her bag, folded up the parchment, and got out his wand. He whispered quietly towards her, but she couldn't understand what he was saying.

When her eyes opened, she didn't recognize a thing. Loose bits of hair were floating around her head and into her eyes, and her arms were a bit sore, as if she'd slept on them. The surroundings all seemed so bright, so airy, so unlike the classroom she had left. "James? James?"

He was sitting beside her, holding her hand, tucking his wand away. "Are we out far enough for you?"

"That depends. Where are we? And how did we get there?"

"Only an hour or so south of school. In the middle of a barley field, I believe. As for how," he lifted up the tail of the broomstick on his other side, "see for yourself."

"James, you know I don't like flying! And I don't remember a thing of it."

"Well, so I stunned you first. How did you think I was going to get you out of Binns's class?"

"I was thinking something more along the lines of crawling under our desks commando-style and climbing out the window. How did you think you were going to get me back to school? And an hour away? We'll miss Transfiguration!"

"Hush, hush. We'll deal with that when we come to it. For now, just relax. It's beautiful out here. The view was amazing flying in, just golden fields as far as I could see."

Reluctantly, she quieted, and leaned her head onto her knees. He moved behind her and softly traced loops down her back. She shrugged off the heavy school robes and let him continue. His grip became stronger, and she arched towards him. His hand pulled out the pins that held her hair up, and an arm snaked around her waist, turning her around, and pulling her down towards him. And it was warm, he was so sweet, and she was happy.

Exhausted, she lay back, her head leaning onto his chest. He sighed contentedly. "Let's just stay here, Lils. How's that?"

"I'm perfectly content not to move."

"No, I mean, for good. Let's you and me just get on this broom and find a little house in some golden place like this, and just be."

She sat up, pushing against him, and turned to look in his eyes. "Don't tempt me, James. It sounds so nice, but you know that we just can't. Not now. Maybe not ever. There are things that we need to do, that we can't do if we don't pick our lives back up."

"Yeah, I know. But we could, remember. I promise you that someday, when all of this is over, you and I will settle down somewhere like this. Wouldn't this be a great place for kids to run around?"

She thought a bit. "When did we ever agree on kids? How did we suddenly get to be living together without anyone ever asking me?"

"You will, though, won't you? I mean, even if there is a war, even if my friends do tease me all to heck, I want to grow old some place like this. I want to be with you some place like this." He was sitting up, grabbing her hands.

"Of course I will. How could I not? I couldn't leave you to take care of yourself out here." She ran her hand through his hair. "Now get the straw out of my hair, and get your behind on that broom. I am not going to miss Charms too."

He laughed, and stroked through her long red hair loosely. "I'll sit in front, and you hold on tight. No side-saddle for you, and no stunning spell either. You are going to be awake and you are going to look at how nice this scenery is, and if you even try to cover your eyes I'll leave you up on top of the goal post back on the Quidditch pitch."

Reluctantly, she climbed on the broom behind him and clasped her wrists around his waist. "You wouldn't dare. But it's cute that you still think you would."

A/N: I know I said they'd be OotP era. So sue me, I lied. But I just could resist. And how else could I have done this within canon but as an L/J? Hope you liked the romantic interlude. And that one was finally at least a little longer, even if not yet up to my usual standard. Much love.

Green Eyed Lady: I'm glad that you liked the Colin P.O.V. I think about him far more than I write about him, so maybe I've found my new calling. And bone-marrow squirming? Really? I didn't think that, and I wrote the thing. Sorry to disappoint, but I just thought of it as sort of a forced dissociation. It's a lot harder to think things like that about 'Mum'. I might expand on Colin's outside this fic series (and really, really, it will get better, I was just listening to song #7 on the CD when I got the idea, so you can see what resulted). Thanks so much.

Colin Taylor: It was Percy that I was talking about. Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough. Which should clear up for you who Penny was, no? I'm glad you liked it.


	4. Heavy Cloud No Rain

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters here. I don't own the music either, but I do feel rather protecting of the specific combination, so at least ask me if you want to use it.

Heavy Cloud No Rain

Turned on the weatherman after the news

I needed sweet rain to wash away my blues

He looked at the chart but he look in vain

Heavy cloud but no rain

The farmer took out a book on some old witchcraft

He made a spell and a potion on a midsummer's night

He killed a brindled calf in the pale moonlight

He prayed to the sky but he prayed in vain

Heavy cloud but no rain

- Sting

"Wouldn't it be easier just to come up with a different way to kill Voldemort?" Ron contemplated. "We've spent the last week trying to figure out how to summon a thunderstorm for a plot that seemed rather shoddy to me from the beginning, and is seeming shoddier the longer this goes on."

"I don't see you having any better ideas, Ronald," Hermione snipped at him from atop the ladder for the upper shelves.

"It seems to me," Harry remarked, adjusting his hold on the bottom of the ladder, "that causing a big rain is something that you'd want to do often enough that someone would have taken the trouble to figure out how to do it. And since Flitwick said it's been illegal for 200 years or so, we've probably been looking in books far too new or far too, well, legal."

"I did think of that, Harry, I just figured that we'd better look into everything we could before figuring out how to break into the Restricted Section," she sighed, climbing another step up to get a better view of a title. Harry tactfully covered his eyes.

Ron slammed shut the book on his lap. "We don't have to break in."

"Sure, what teacher d'you expect will give us free access to the Restricted Section so we can carry out a plot that violates the International Warlock's Convention of 1872, the Nations United in Magic charter, and the British Code for Wizards, besides having the possibility of causing a drought over most of the continent and likely killing at least the three of us?"

"But," he gestured emphatically for a moment before finding any words. "Voldemort!"

"Yes, Ron, Voldemort. That doesn't mean the laws have changed any, especially not those ones. And it doesn't mean the teachers have changed any in their attitudes towards them. In fact, they are even more strict about them than they used to be."

Ron grumbled and opened the book back up.

Two more hours saw them still tucked between the last row of shelves and the wall, just switched around a little. Ron stood near the shelf, tucking books back up. Hermione sat on a conjured cushion, book on her lap, deeply absorbed. She had gotten reading glasses the previous summer, when she couldn't just fix them herself, and at the bottom of every page she pushed them back in place. Harry had just arrived with a large tray from the kitchen.

"What would you like, Hermione? They sent me a pot of tea, Ginger Newts, pumpkin juice, blackberry walnut scones, chocolate biscuits, and some of those little beef pasties you always want during full moons. Which, let me remind you, is a little creepy."

"A pasty, a cup of tea - no sugar, and," she lifted her head to glance at the tray, "two scones."

He divided those out on a small plate for her and poured the tea. "Here you go. Ron, you?"

"Some pumpkin juice and the chocolate biscuits. Hermione, are you still in the middle of the Juno Pritchard book?"

"Yeah, and it's not doing much good."

Harry filled the second plate for Ron and started nibbling on the Ginger Newts. He almost choked when Hermione yelled out.

"I'm sick of this! There can't just be this one stupid spell to do this! And the flaming thing has to actually be written somewhere!"

Harry coughed the bit of Newt out of his windpipe. "Hermione, calm down. Let's see what we can do about this. Are you sure Madam Pince won't be back until next week?"

"Yes, she was quite clear about that. That's why we've been in here, she wants me in charge in case any of the teachers need anything."

"Didn't you work out a searching charm of some sort that you tried to teach me a few years ago? The one you said you wished you had come up with when we were looking up Nicholas Flamel?"

"We already tried that, Harry, that's how we got all of these," she gestured towards where the pile of books had been, before realizing that Ron had already re-shelved the rest of them and was poking at Harry's Ginger Newts, trying to animate them.

"I know, Hermione, but how about it if you were to try it just on the name of that one spell they keep talking about?"

She turned a bit pink and grabbed a second pasty off his tray. "That could work." She pointed her wand at the page and got the name of the spell to glow a bit. "Locatum."

Bits of light flew off the page. A lot of them clustered around the shelf Ron was leaning against, but Harry's eyes followed a few of them into the Restricted Section. "Shall we?" he proposed, setting down the tray and offering a hand to help Hermione up.

"Oh, I suppose so." She accepted his hand up, and the three of them set off for the dark corner of the library.

"Are you sure this is the one they meant?"

"Ugh, that's disgusting!"

"Where in the world are we supposed to get one of those? I can imagine try to order it through owl post."

"Wait, you have to kill it? That's revolting."

"And so well illustrated."

"Are you sure you want to do this, even if it is the one they meant?"

"Well it's not like we have all that much time to decide! The solstice is only four days away, and I'm sure it will take me almost that long to make the potion."

"Oh, you're making the potion. That means you expect us to go and find . . . "

"Well it's not like I could do that. I can't fly."

"You could summon one."

"If I could do that I could just summon the thunderstorm in the first place."

"Why don't you just do that, then, and we won't have to kill anything?"

"Have you not seen the clouds in the Great Hall all week?"

"Oh. Already tried that, then."

"That doesn't mean that you couldn't."

"I'd like to see you try to summon one. Not only is the nearest over a hundred miles away, they're really big. It's not like a piece of parchment or something that you can just catch in your hands as it comes."

"Even the little ones?"

"We're supposed to use a baby?"

"That's what it says."

"That's not what the guy in the picture is doing."

"Yes, but he's also using a guillotine, so I'm not sure how accurate we can assume the pictures are."

"Either way, we can't just summon one, and I can't fly."

"Fine, but remember, you'll have to do this in the middle of the night. The library's supposed to be supervised."

"We can close for meals. We're closed for tea."

"You mean we're starting this now?"

"When else?"

"I don't know, some time that's not now?"

"Just go. We won't need it until Friday night, and I certainly don't want to hide it in my room. Just figure out where the closest place to get one is."

"It's a good thing we like you, really. There aren't very many people I'd do this for."

"Hey, speak for yourself."

"What, you mean to say you're less distinguishing in who you take this sort of orders from?"

"Shut up."

"You said it."

"Grow up, the both of you. I don't want to see either of you before dinner."

"Yes, sir."

"I won't dignify that with a response."

Hermione tucked the last pasty in her pocket, banished the tray and dishes back to the kitchen, and led the boys out the door.

"There's something anti-climactic about all of this," Hermione sighed.

Ron spoke up. "I seem to have missed something. Why are we shivering in Hagrid's hut and not doing the rest of the curse?"

"Because, Ron, it take a lightning storm. A really, really big lightning storm. And the potion got all wet and ruined, and the spell is only any good on the Summer Solstice, when it's dry. And if you hadn't noticed, it's raining outside."

"Are you telling me I just killed a cow for nothing?"

"I'm really, really sorry?"

"Bloody hell."

A/N: I was having a lot of fun writing this. I wasn't ready for them to actually defeat Voldemort, but it was a brave attempt anyway. Tell me what you think (or anyone who has the album and wants to make suggestions for the next songs). This seemed particularly appropriate after the hurricane-rainstorms and the tornados we were having here when I started working on this.

Green Eyed Lady: Thanks for your comments on the previous chapter. I tried to fix it up a little, so the 'kidnapping' was a bit more realistic. Hope you liked the new-and-improved length.


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